Owsiak Accounting & Tax Services LLC

12/22/2024

The gig economy can present challenges to taxpayers engaged in this activity. Check out our website to learn more about how you can get up-to-speed on requirements.

12/02/2024

Financial Stress is real, especially for Gen Z who appears to be the most stressed about their finances based on PNC survey below.

Who is helping you with your financial stress? Have you engaged help in building your long term plan, creating an annual budget, and recommending spend changes?

Our core offerings to individuals include advisory, tax planning, and tax filing. Finding a specialist in each area can be exhausting!

Annual Financial Wellness in the Workplace Report Highlights Workplace Stressors, Benefits Needs and Financial Goals Across Generations 

12/02/2024

These can seem simple but they’re actually areas where individuals commonly make mistakes when self filing.

- equity compensation (ex: RSUs, ESPP, options)
- 1099 income
- rental income / activity
- schedule C - including sole prop or single member LLC
- withholding / estimated payments

For self filers, do you have an expectation of the right answer for the items above? If not, it might be a good time to hire a preparer who should!

10/09/2024

October is National Estate Planning Awareness Month. While there are many articles that talk through assigning beneficiaries and inventorying assets, here are a few areas commonly overlooked.

1. Digital Assets: don’t forget to identify and assign ownership over these assets (including email)

2. Expenses: what expenses will the estate need to close?

3. Liabilities (loans, credit cards): what loans and credit cards will your estate have to handle?

4. Estate Exclusion Portability (Spousal)

5. Ensuring proper records (e.g., Step-Up basis)

It’s very common for us to receive inquiries on certain types of assets - how do I report an inherited 401k or how do I distribute an inherited IRA - but there’s much more to organizing and handling an estate.

Your accountant can help you get organized and update your plan annually!

10/01/2024

Q4 is a great time to revisit tax planning activities with your accountant for year end and next year.

1) Many employers have open enrollment for benefits around calendar year end for next year. Are you working with your tax professional to understand your selection options? For example, a change in dependents or a change in income may have tax consequences. For joint filers with two jobs, are you tax planning and benefit selecting together?

2) November is typically when tax firms pivot to tax filing prep for next year. Firms may have limited availability for tax planning as year end and tax season approaches.

3) You have time to calculate any change to your withholding and submit a W-4 to your employer for the current year and next year.

07/19/2024

Verify your preparer before contracting for tax preparer services.

Here’s another area (Clean Energy Credits) where the IRS is seeing a scam targeting 1040 filers.

IR-2024-182, July 3, 2024 — The Internal Revenue Service today warned taxpayers not to fall victim to a new emerging scam involving buying clean energy tax credits.

07/19/2024

Without diving into politics, we expect to hear more about how candidates for public office will approach the TCJA expiring in 2025.

Are you planning for the potential TCJA sunset?

05/30/2024

What an alarming situation and response from the self-identified scammer. Unfortunately, there are many horror stories involving fraudsters and estates, elderly, etc.

While the takeaways are many from this event, one reminder is to retain appropriate documentation on assets (e.g., titles) and liabilities (e.g., loans) for your estate plan OR instructions on where to find them. It’s common to see asset listings and beneficiaries in estate documents, but a complete estate plan includes a solid roadmap and instructions for handling loans, credit cards, expenses, and notifications.

A person using an email for the company seeking to foreclose on the former home of Elvis Presley says his ring was behind the threat to sell the beloved landmark.

05/29/2024

If you’re like me, Spring means more projects around the house. For those looking to make home improvements and/or update appliances, have you looked into home improvement tax credits and confirmed availability / eligibility and reporting requirements before starting your project?

Another great reason to work with a tax professional!

Link to IRS page:

If you make home improvements for energy efficiency, you may qualify for an annual tax credit up to $3,200.

04/17/2024

We’re already receiving inquiries from individuals looking for tax support for next year. If tax filing season didn’t go the way you thought and you are looking for tax services, remember:

The best time to find a new tax preparer is now.

Why? Time! Service providers have time to onboard clients, time to review tax filings, time to discuss actions that may impact your tax filing, and time to put any actions into motion (tax planning).

04/17/2024

With April 15th behind us, we’d like to thank our customers who joined us for our first tax season!

We look forward to working with many of you throughout the year to ensure next year’s filing is also a success!

04/03/2024

An interesting article from CNBC. From client interactions, stress is largely in two areas - 1) As the article notes, knowing how to do taxes, what the forms mean, and where the forms go for tax filing. 2) The uncertainty of the tax form outcome relative to expectations. For example, was the taxpayer expecting a refund and the form shows a balance due. Is the payment larger or refund smaller than expected?

The right tax professional should provide peace of mind.

Over half of Gen Z say they expect the stress of filing taxes to bring them to tears this year —the first step a tax expert recommends to make filing easier.